


Weiderganger

by Lady_MidnightII



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Character Death, Dark!Prussia, Dialogue Heavy, I Don't Even Know, I Tried, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mild Gore, My First Work in This Fandom, Sibling Incest, Supernatural Elements, This is much less dark than I make it sound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 17:04:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1312540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_MidnightII/pseuds/Lady_MidnightII
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the snow falls and the dark settles over the horizon, the dead always come home.<br/>Sometimes all they find is derelict houses, ruins hundreds of years old.  Sometimes, they find someone to come back to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weiderganger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Prince_of_Elsinore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prince_of_Elsinore/gifts).
  * Inspired by [When the Dead Do Not Rest](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040068) by [Prince_of_Elsinore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prince_of_Elsinore/pseuds/Prince_of_Elsinore). 



> This is my first fic in the fandom and on the archive, so I hope I didn't totally bastardize Luddy and Gil, that wasn't my intention. I was inspired to write this little fic when reading Prince_Of_Elsinore's fic When The Dead Do Not Rest. It is so fabulous and the characterizations are superb; go read it before or after, just read it, okay? This is a human AU, and has no such Hetalia spoilers, so be free to read without fear. Have fun reading! Oh yes, and I don't claim Hetalia or anything, I don't own anything except the fic itself (not even the inspiration.)

* * *

The sky is black, the room freezing, as if a place for the dead; it could be. Table decorated on this anniversary, in spring’s saved roses, withered brown, mantel garlanded with pine boughs, evergreen, ever watching, it could be. A chair, wingback, shades a man from view. Back erect, outlined in soft amber, a king upon his throne, sits a man frigid as the blizzard raging just beyond the quiet door. Eyes blue as the sky when the raven first flew, hair the pale gold of weak sunlight, he is painted with the fine strokes of melancholy, hidden in the snow drifts of his countenance.

     There, he sits. The hissing fire’s dying wrings shadows’ souls from coals, casting them upon the floor, wrought upon the walls in patterns with no meaning.

They invite accidental phantasms, clothed in their shrouds of spiders’ webs and worm eaten wool. Damp, smelling of earth. They very well may come, hands grasping, mouths gasping in; Ludwig doesn’t care. He’s only looking for one. Alone, he sits in wait for him: tiny, thin frame, sinewy strength running through his arms; grin wild, wide eyes blooming poppies in his pale, snowy face, sharp-boned and seemingly delicate.

“Had it not been for those devil eyes of yours…. Fierce crow, you would have lived your life in honor here, in the cruel kingdom of General Winter. You belonged here, with your alabaster skin and silver tongue; but those eyes…” Ludwig trails off, thinking, mouth tight. Sunken and dim as they would be now, he remembers those eyes as if he’d seen them today: the crimson glint, the deep tinge of tawny maroon. The teasing laugh (Kesesesese!) that matched those eyes spark for spark.

What passion, what flame! Alas, that flame so bright should be extinguished so soon, in such tragedy; ending in the dead of night, the wind moaning through the aged wood of the church bell tower, clanging its ghastly knell into the thunder of the storm; ending hanged in that empty place from stiff rope, a surprise, a wounding gift to the future damned. From that twisted rope there slowly turned the seed of avarice that started the cursed tree, the tree of happy death.

Paid was the reaper, scythe of deliverance amiss; and for what? Paid was he for gentle smiles coming from soft lips, gazes shared with shy doe eyes, robin egg blue replacing dun, for sun warmed evenings in the pond, covered with lilies. Paid was Death for reasons unknown to Ludwig; he now knows what had unwittingly, unintentionally, caused that accursed night, proven by the broken red seal on a slip of parchment, the crow stamped in the wax.

The writing shouts out, clear to him, indecipherable to all other eyes. For Ludwig, and his eyes alone. And for what, was this late confession from a late confessor? All for nothing. The churchyard never opened its murky embrace to that boy with red in his eyes, nor did his tongue have a coin to receive upon it; simple touches did not advance to some deeper contact. It’s been countless snows and flower blooms since then, more still since the afternoon, immortal, in that meadow of tulips and sweet trees. And yet Ludwig waits here, broken, upon his throne, too late, a chest full of memories his constant reminder. The silver coins have been put away, thrown viciously into the snow. He should be free. He’s not. “What meaning has a throne when no one is by one’s side to share it?

What mournful day is this dark, always it was coming, rearing its dagger teeth to tear my soul. Year by year, I bore its inevitability; no longer. Come for me; today, I await you. See the roses of your eyes, mottled as surely you are, beautiful still, nevermind memory? Ah, how time soars on the backs of those terrible twins, Thought with his black wings, and Memory, whose feathers still remember the white of the first raven. Still, no greater wisdom has those wily demons afforded me after all this passing of seasons, after this horror cry, echoing on the paper. I should have known…. why did I not see? Child I was, but even that is no defender of my blindness. Cursed, wicked eyes, you betrayed me! My own parents saw so clearly what you did not!”

Said eyes pool and vision blurs. Ludwig hangs his head, teeth gnawing lips, sparkling tears frozen in the dying fire. Strong hands clench.

“How can I beg forgiveness…. For when in my own heart, I do not deny the weak heat, unstable in its intensity, tempered in tenderness, that I felt for you? But I was a jester when you were here; youth is a lie, a farce, beautiful only in its foolish madness. Defiler of truth, wrecker of innocence, murderer of love, thou art youth.

In all, but you, you crow that pecked my heart to shreds, who stole mine eyes to devour, blinding me to any other, man or woman. I am shattered: parents gone mad after your passing, hands forever stained with your funeral dirt; no one near to me as you once were, are; child you were, but you knew yourself wholly already; you loved me with a love more than love, you brash, radiant boy….!”

Ludwig chokes, last words too much. He sobs once, crumpling the paper, the damning paper, to his cheek.

“Dearest one, how I wish I had gone with you to that place beneath the birch, unmarked but for your name upon a plank; I wish the priest had listened to me, let me bury you rightly with my own hands, for who else would you have wanted to lay you beneath the earth? I’ve missed you; you and your grating laughter, your hands that always lead me to mischief, your words that praised and spited me in one breath; your eyes, that shone with the foreign heat of the summer, no matter the ice and the long dark; how I have missed all these grains of you. In my pride, I did not know what treasure I had before you took yourself from me; such petty things, we let separate us, even for the shortest of times; but they never lasted, those periods of separation. Remember, bruderlein, that joy filled afternoon with the sun at our backs, the silky water trailing past with our fevered laughter? Remember the pure white lilies, un-gilded, that floated on that water? Shame, my heart beats, bleeding mercilessly the tears which I cannot let fall, cold as my heart is in your gaping absence. Broken and cold, I am the brittle ice in that last circle Dante ventured to, the house of the Lord of Evil and his wards, the realm of the betrayers. Dear crow, you perished as did Iscariot, that traitor of men, but I am the one who committed the sin.

You said I was your salvation, your own sin; forgive me, for it is true: in blindness, I betrayed you, you the martyr marched bravely to Death in my stead. I would go to that gruesome wood where the trees are watered with blood, and each is its own suffering; oh, if I only could bring you back from that desolate place; but even then, I know you are not there.”

There’s a gentle creak, but the door doesn’t open. Not a shriveled petal stirs. But then he’s, it’s there, all in graveside black, skin tight and pale like snow. It’s smeared with dirt and blackened blood, teeth marks interrupting the unbroken expanse of white on its arms and chest, as if eaten by some unknown creature. Over its shoulders, a half of a sheet, a shroud, grey in age, full of holes. It has silvery white hair, tangled with leaves and clods of dirt; with itself, it brings the miasma of the grave, of rot and damp, clammy earth, the echoes of frantic gnawing and silent writhing, gasping season after season. A perfect circlet of black and blue blooms on its neck, a necklace of festering black pearls, not a chain of rope. One eye socket is empty, crawling with worms, hints of bone showing through; but the other is bright red, almost crimson, in fact; just as a poppy would look…. or the flames of the pit. It grins, teeth sharp, crusted with dark taboo, flesh of the self. Ludwig turns his head, and smiles, that icy blue calm as ever, almost relieved. His lips move.

“Gilbert….” It makes a sound like a hiss (“Little brother.”), a gruesome sound holding no threat of death…. but unending promise of an infinite abyss. It comes closer, rustling, until it is standing directly in front of Ludwig, the fire dimming, dimming…. Gone.

 

After the blizzard ceases its howling after two terrifying weeks, the village begins to recover, and the elders check on each house. Most have made it through intact; however, the keening of the relatives of the few unlucky dead still pierce the air. The last to be checked is the Beilschmidt house.                                                        Whispers always circled that house, whose walls were supposedly cursed by the bell tower’s call one rainy night; cursed by the strange occurence of a grave all too fresh; the mute horror of a silent boy with a key around his neck ever since the incident, fingernails dirty and split. Regardless, the village elders check every home alike despite their discomfort. It’s their duty, after all.

Approaching, they find silver coin scattered in the snow. Puzzled, they leave them be, and approach the door. The door is open. What a sight: blood, frozen, covers the floor, the wingback chair, pieces of indescript flesh flung about. There’s no body. Nobody home. The room is colder than in the shadow of a glacier, and it has nothing to do with the snow outside. Upon further, horrified investigation, they find the key Ludwig always wore nearby, stuck in the lock of the polished wooden chest behind his chair. The chest was made so finely, so tightly, that nothing could get in to disturb its contents…. or let its contents get out. Inside is some dark earth. A letter ripped to shreds. A summer water lily, dried and withered. A tattered shroud. But no body. Only some locks of living hair, moonlight silver and winter gold.


End file.
